Syrian dissident Mahmoud Eisa was about to step into a taxi in Damascus with a communist comrade in the autumn of 1992 when security agents ambushed them. They were shoved into a white Peugeot that took them to a security branch.
With them in the car was Atif Najib, the intelligence operative sentenced to death by a Damascus court on Tuesday for his role in cracking down on peaceful protests that broke out in Deraa province in 2011. It was the first sentencing of a member of the Assad regime who stayed in Syria after the former president's downfall in December 2024. Most members of the ruling elite fled the country.
Najib “held his gun to my chest,” said Mr Eisa. At the security compound, Najib attached wires to Mr Eisa's body and electrocuted him, as part of two daily torture sessions. “I fainted with every shock,” said Mr Eisa, who subsequently spent eight years as a political prisoner.
At the time, Najib was a junior figure in the security apparatus that underpinned the Assad family regime. A maternal cousin of Bashar Al Assad, he rose through the ranks to become head of political intelligence in Deraa.
Part of the trial concentrated on his role in “Black Wednesday”, when security forces killed at least 11 protesters outside Omari Mosque in Old Deraa in 2011. The event was regarded as the first massacre of what became Syria’s prolonged civil war.
Although Najib was “a pillar of the system who had no qualms about committing whatever crimes it takes to preserve it”, Mr Eisa is not in favour of his execution. “I am against the death penalty,” said Mr Eisa. He added that it would be hard to convince anyone else in Deraa that Najib should spared death, which in Syria is brought about by hanging.
“He would be punished if he spends long years in prison, instead of a hanging that would take half an hour,” Mr Eisa told The National.
The court had charged Najib, who is in his mid-60s, with murdering an unspecified number of people, as well as torture and other crimes. It sentenced Bashar Al Assad and eight other men in absentia in connection with the same case.
Najib maintained his innocence throughout the eight-session trial. The sentence, which is subject to appeal, was pronounced under the same criminal code that existed under Assad. A transitional justice law that recognises war crimes and crimes against humanity is expected to be passed this year, however.
Omar Nseirat, a member of a prominent family in Deraa who became civil figure in the 2011 uprising, said there has been “too much blood” to “even think” of sparing Najib.
Syria, Mr Nseirat said, “is not Tunisia”, where hundreds were killed before the regime was toppled. In Deraa alone, the former regime killed thousands of civilians, Mr Nseirat pointed out.
The clannish society in the area, he said, has a long memory and people are angry at the time taken to start the transitional justice process.
Although it has been 15 years since the fateful events in Deraa, the blood shed by Najib and others in former regime “is still fresh”, Mr Nseirat said.
“People in Deraa have waited so long. They will be up in arms if he is not executed quickly,” he added.
